Rebel Island (3 page)

We didn’t see Garrett, but we heard him next door. As the
storm got louder, he cranked up Jimmy Buffett on his boom box.
Songs You Know by Heart
vibrated so hard against the wall it might’ve been
Songs You Know by Braille.
There was another sound, too—a blender, I think. Leave it to my brother to pack his own tropical drink factory.

Maia couldn’t take a shower because of the storm, but she spent a long time in the bathroom freshening up. Warm water always made her feel better. Being pregnant, she missed her daily steamy hot bubble baths. She said she would take up that grievance with our kid once he was an adult.

As the storm got louder, so did our neighbors. Some college kids were right above us, stomping and whooping. One of them yelled, “Hurricane party!” Down the hall, a hammer was banging. Maybe Alex and his staff had decided to board up the windows.

I wondered what Alex wanted to ask me. Probably an investigative favor. An employee problem. A cheating girlfriend. Private investigators got everything, which was why I’d quit being one. Well…that was one reason, anyway.

I tried to convince myself Jesse Longoria’s presence on the island was a total coincidence. Nothing to worry about, just like the storm.

If I closed my eyes and concentrated on the music coming through the walls, I could almost ignore the hammering and the rain.

The last time I’d seen Jesse Longoria had been the week of
my best friend’s funeral.

January in San Antonio. The grass was crunchy with ice. Frozen cactuses turned to mush in the tiny gravel lawns of the South Side. At San Fernando Cemetery, the sky was the same color as the tombstones.

I’d come to lay fresh flowers on Ralph’s grave. I found Jesse Longoria standing on it, reading the headstone. He wore a black wool overcoat and his customary pleasant smile, as if he could imagine no place he’d rather be on a bitter cold day.

“I missed the funeral,” he told me. “I wanted to make sure he was dead.”

“Get off.”

I expected a fight. I probably wanted one.

Longoria chose not to humor me. He stepped off the grave. “I never got to hunt Ralph Arguello. Shame. I would’ve enjoyed that.”

“You need to leave.”

“Going to blame yourself for his death, too, Navarre? You never had any sense about criminals.”

I was crushing the stems of the marigolds I’d brought. “I don’t murder fugitives in my custody. That what you mean?”

Longoria’s laugh turned to mist in the cold air. “You’re not honest with yourself, son. You knew exactly what would happen to that client of yours, sooner or later. He was no different from your friend here.” He gestured at Ralph’s headstone.

“Where’d you dump the body, Longoria?”

His smile didn’t waver. “If you can’t stop feeling guilty, son, maybe you should find a different line of work. Nobody’s ever stopped me from doing what was necessary. Nobody ever will.”

He strolled away down the line of tombstones. As he passed a child’s grave, he flicked a multicolored pinwheel and set it spinning.

I turned on the nightstand radio. All I could get was a
garbled AM news station from Corpus Christi. Tropical Storm Aidan, which forecasters had dismissed as dying, was regaining hurricane strength. Despite Garrett’s assurances that it would veer north—that no hurricane had ever hit the Texas coast so early in the season—Aidan was bearing down on top of us. Ferry service to most locations had been suspended. Power was down in several communities. Evacuation routes were jammed.

“What’s the news?” Maia came out of the bathroom, toweling her hair.

I turned off the radio. “Nothing much.”

Thunder shook the windows. The power blinked out then came back on. Somebody upstairs yelled, “
Yeah,
baby!”

I stared at the clock flashing 12:01. I was just thinking how useless that would be if I were trying to time the occurrence of a crime, when I heard the shot.

Maia and I locked eyes.

“A board cracking,” I said. “Something slammed into the building.”

“Tres, that was a gun.”

I looked at the bay window, which I’d closed with the storm shutters. I tried to believe the noise had come from somewhere out there, but I knew better. The shot had come from inside the hotel.

Garrett’s music was still playing next door. The college kids were still stomping around upstairs. I’d heard enough gunshots in my life. Maybe if I just let this one go, let a few more bars of “Cheeseburger in Paradise” play through…

“Tres,” Maia said, “we need to check it out.”

“We’re on vacation. They have a staff here. Alex can handle it.”

“Fine,” Maia said. “I’ll go.”

“No, you won’t.”

“Hand me my dress.”

“All right,” I relented. “I’ll go. Just…stay put.”

There was a knock on our door. Garrett yelled, “Y’all arguing in there? Thought I heard a gunshot.”

Maia did not stay put. Neither did Garrett.

They followed me down the hall as if I knew where I was going. Garrett was in a wheelchair I’d never seen before. Apparently he kept a spare on the second floor, which told me he’d been visiting the hotel a lot more than I’d known.

On the stairs we ran into the older gentleman I’d seen in the lobby. He was taller than I’d realized, almost seven feet. With his shock-white hair and his black linen undertaker’s suit he was a bit disconcerting to meet in a dark stairwell. That, and the fact he was armed with a .45 Colt Defender.

“I heard a shot,” he explained.

I wasn’t sure what bothered me more—the gun, or the way his hand shook as he held it. He must’ve seen the way I was looking at him, because he slipped the gun into his pocket. “I thought the sound came from upstairs.”

“I was thinking downstairs,” I said.

“I’ll follow you, then.”

Great,
I thought.

We trooped into the lobby and I got plowed into by the blond woman I’d seen crying earlier.

“Whoa,” I said. “Where are you going?”

She pushed past me and raced up the stairs.

Chris the manager came out of the office in hot pursuit. He stopped short when he saw us. “Hi, uh…”

His ears were red. He was breathing heavy.

“We heard something,” I told him. “Sounded like a shot.”

“A shot? No, couldn’t have been a shot.”

“Did you hear it?”

“No. I mean…no. Who would have a gun?”

I thought about that. The old gentleman had one. So did Maia. She never left home without her Lamaze pillow and her. 357. Who else?

“The marshal,” Maia said, following my thoughts. “What room is he in?”

Chris paled. “Oh…uh…”

“Come on, man!” Garrett growled. “I got margaritas melting upstairs!”

You don’t argue with a no-legged man who wants a margarita.

“Room 112,” Chris said. “End of the hall on the left. Now if you’ll excuse me, I, uh—” He ran after the blond lady.

“Busy place,” Maia said.

She started to lead the way down the hall, but I put my arm out to stop her. “Pregnant women do not take point.”

“Pooh,” she said.

We found room 112. The door was ajar. I knocked anyway. “Longoria?”

No answer.

Maia and I exchanged looks.

“Go ahead, point man,” she told me.

Trespassing in Longoria’s room didn’t sound like the safest idea. On the other hand, I had Maia, Garrett and an old guy with a .45 for backup.

I opened the door.

The first thing I noticed was the broken window. Glass was strewn all over the room. Rain blew in, soaking the carpet, the dresser and the open suitcase.

Jesse Longoria was sprawled at the foot of the bed, half wrapped in the blanket he’d clawed off as he fell. He was staring at the ceiling, a pained expression on his face, as if embarrassed that he had not managed to cover the bullet hole in his chest.

4

Chris ran down the hall. The wind shook the walls. The
storm had taken him by surprise. After surfing the Gulf Coast waters so long, he thought he knew the weather. But he’d anticipated nothing like this. It wasn’t natural the way the hurricane had turned toward them, bearing down on Rebel Island with a malicious will.

If he’d known, he never would’ve arranged things the way he had.

When he caught up with Lane, she was in his bedroom, looking through his dresser.

“Stop it!” he said.

She looked up, her eyes still red. Her blond hair was stringy and wet from the shower.

“What have you done?” she demanded.

Chris balled his fists. He stared at the picture on his dresser mirror: a photo of the beach at Waikiki. Thinking of Hawaii usually calmed him down, but now his dream of moving there seemed childish. Had he really believed he’d be able to get away from here?

“I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Chris, I know you better than that.”

“I would never…I’d never hurt you, Lane.”

She looked down at the drawers she’d pillaged and sobbed in frustration.

Chris wanted to hold her. He wanted to apologize for bringing her here, but he’d needed to see her so badly. And she needed protection. He knew that better than anyone.

“I’ll make it all right,” he promised.

She shook her head miserably. The bruises on her face had faded weeks ago, but he could still imagine their shadows around her eyes.

“How many more people are going to die, Chris? You’ve been saying it’s all right. You’re going to fix it, but—”

“I will. Right now.”

He held Lane’s gaze, trying to make her believe him. Whenever he had trouble sleeping—and that was often—he would imagine her eyes, the way they shone when she was happy. He would remember the times he’d made her laugh when they were younger, in high school, before everything went wrong. Since then, he had messed up over and over. His plans had failed. But tonight it had to end.

“Stay here,” he told Lane. “I’ll be back.”

Without waiting for her answer, he headed down the hallway. He knew where he needed to go. How many more needed to die?

One,
he thought.
Only one.

5

At least Jesse Longoria was having a worse vacation than
I was.

He’d been shot once at close range. There was no visible murder weapon in the room. Longoria’s holster was empty.

“I need to get out of here,” Maia murmured.

I nodded. Pregnancy had made her queasy about things that had never bothered her before—strawberries, hamburger meat, corpses.

“Garrett,” I said, “take her back to the room, please.”

“Jesus,” he said. “That’s like a dead cop.”

“Very much like one.” I looked at the old gentleman in the black suit. “Sir, would you go find the owner, please? Alex Huff. Tell him to call the police.”

After they were gone, I debated the wisdom of walking farther into the room. Glass shards were everywhere. Blood and rain spattered the bed and the carpet. Whatever crime scene integrity there had been, the storm was rapidly blowing it to hell.

I stepped inside. Two beds. There was an outside door. It was closed. I couldn’t tell if it was locked. As I recalled, few rooms in the hotel had private exits. On the second bed were an open suitcase and something else—a small curl of red like a ribbon. I stepped closer. It was a set of plastic handcuffs. They’d been cut.

A cold feeling started in the pit of my stomach.

Alex Huff ran into me from behind. “I heard…Oh, crap.”

He looked only slightly better than the corpse. He had a bruise under his left eye, and superficial cuts on his arms, like he’d been sprayed with glass. His clothes were soaking wet.

“What happened to you?” I asked.

He tore his eyes away from the dead marshal. “The—the windows in the dining room blew out. I was boarding them up, but
…Jesus.
What happened to him?”

“You mean aside from getting shot dead? I’m not sure. Any idea what he was doing on the island?”

“No, I mean…” He faltered, apparently considering something he didn’t like. “Chris checked him in.”

“When?”

“Yesterday? It’s been so crazy with the storm and…”

“And what?”

“Nothing. Just
…Damn
it. Why did he have to go and die in
my
hotel?”

I studied Alex’s battered face and wondered what he wasn’t telling me. “Call the police. Who’s got jurisdiction here? Aransas Sheriff’s Department?”

“I—I can’t call the police.”

“Why not?”

“The phone lines are down.”

“Cell phone?”

“We’ve never had mobile service out here.”

“Email? Smoke signals? Message in a bottle? What do you use for emergencies?”

Alex’s eyes got unfocused, like he was going into shock. I wanted to slap him. He needed to take charge. This was his problem, not mine.

“I don’t…Wait. The radio. It’s in the lighthouse. I was just out there checking the backup generator. I didn’t even think about it—”

“We’re on backup generator?” I interrupted.

“Yeah. Regular power is down. But it’s cool. We got enough juice to get through the night, assuming the house stays in one piece.”

As if on cue, a piece of driftwood flew in the window and slammed against the wall.

“We need to get out of here,” I told Alex. “Radio first. Then we’ll try to seal that window.”

He nodded hazily. I steered him out of the room and made sure he locked the door behind us.

In the hallway, the older gentleman was talking to three college guys, trying to convince them to go away.

“Dude!” one of them said to me. “Is it true?”

He had a mop of red hair, yellow shorts and a white T-shirt, so he was the same colors as a candy corn. His shirt said OU SUCKS, a little diplomatic statement from the University of Texas football department.

Thunder rattled the building.

“You all need to get to the center of the hotel,” I said. “Alex, safest place for storm shelter?”

“Parlor,” he said. “Right in the middle of the building, no windows.”

I looked at the old man, who seemed pretty calm. “You are—”

“Benjamin Lindy,” he told me. “From Kingsville.”

“All right, Mr. Lindy from Kingsville. Would you mind rounding everyone up, getting them into the parlor? We need to make sure everyone is safe. Then we need to have a group talk.”

He nodded.

“Dude!” the redheaded kid said. “A guy got shot? That is freaking awesome!”

Mr. Lindy turned on him and the college guys all took a step back. The old man’s expression was hard and cold as a blue norther.

“I hope,” Lindy said calmly, “that you are using the word ‘awesome’ in some fashion I do not understand. I would hate to think you were treating a man’s murder as entertainment. Now, why don’t you all help me notify the other guests?”

He held out his arms, and without touching the college guys, swept them toward the parlor.

I watched Lindy walk away and wondered what he would’ve been like forty years ago, before his hair turned white and his hands began to shake. I imagined he rarely needed his Colt .45 to make his point.

“Lighthouse,” I told Alex. “Let’s go.”

In the lobby, the tearful blond lady was standing by the sofa, looking lost. As soon as she saw us, she slipped out of the room.

“Who’s
La Llorona
?” I asked Alex.

He stared at me blankly.

“That lady,” I said. “She looks like the weeping ghost in the legend…the one who drowned her kids.”

Alex looked like he was about to cry himself. “She drowned her kids? I got a guest who drowned her kids?”

“Never mind.”

We got to the front door and I made the mistake of opening it. That’s when I realized we were going to die before we ever reached the radio.

The lighthouse door was only fifty feet from the hotel
entrance, but it might as well have been a mile. The air was a blender of sand and rain and swirling flotsam—oyster shells and chunks of wood that looked suspiciously like planks from the island’s boat dock.

I swung back to Alex and yelled “Forget it!” but he must’ve thought I said something else because he forged ahead into the storm. Like a fool, I decided I’d better follow.

We skittered around like a silent movie comedy, my feet slipping on the wet path. I should’ve fallen several times, but the wind kept pushing me upright and propelling me forward, like I was being shoved through a mob of linebackers. Sand needled my exposed skin, but by some miracle I didn’t get smashed by anything larger.

Alex shouldered open the lighthouse door. We collapsed inside, soaking wet, and Alex forced the door shut.

“Christ,” he gasped. “Feel like I just ran a marathon.”

He rummaged through his coat pockets, found a flashlight and clicked it on.

His face, already cut up and bruised, was now plastered with wet cordgrass. He had twigs sticking out of his curly hair. He looked like a scarecrow that had just gotten mugged. I doubted I looked much better.

Alex swept his flashlight around the room. We were at the bottom of a hexagonal well of unpainted limestone. Just as I remembered, metal stairs spiraled around the walls toward the lantern gallery far above. I’d only been inside the tower once before. My memories of the place were not good.

Here, the roar of the storm was muted, but there was another sound—a grinding in the walls, as if the limestone blocks were moving.

I reminded myself that the tower had stood for over a century. No way would it pick this moment to collapse. The chances were better of getting struck by lightning.

Thunder boomed outside.

Okay. Bad comparison.

“Where’s the radio?” I asked Alex.

He pointed to the platform seven stories above us.

Great.

I knew the beacon hadn’t worked in decades. I wasn’t sure why Alex would keep the radio up there, but I didn’t ask.

We began to climb.

The first time I’d ventured inside this lighthouse, I’d been
trespassing.

I was twelve years old and running from my dad.

I thought I’d escape to the northern end of the island. That’s where I usually went to be alone. But as I passed the lighthouse, I remembered my dad’s stern warning that the place was much too dangerous. I should never go in there.

What angry twelve-year-old boy could resist a challenge like that?

I ran to the door and was surprised that it creaked open easily. Inside, the air was cool and damp. I shut the door and put my back against it.

I tried to steady my breathing. I wanted to forget the scene I’d just witnessed in our hotel room. I probably would’ve started sobbing, but a faint noise from above made me freeze.

Scrape. Scrape. Scrape,
like an animal clawing at wood—a
large
animal.

At the top of the stairs, in a crescent of daylight, a shadow rippled, as if someone or something was up there.

My instincts told me to leave, but then I heard my father’s voice outside.

“Tres!” he yelled. “Come on, now. I’m sorry, goddamn it! Where are you?”

He sounded as if he was coming toward the door. I decided to take my chances with the giant animal upstairs.

I took the metal steps as quietly as I could, but my own heartbeat sounded like a bass drum. The limestone blocks were carved with graffiti. One said,
W. Dawes, 1898.

I smelled sweet, acrid smoke and the scent of fresh-cut wood. I didn’t realize the scratching sounds had stopped until I reached the top of the stairs and found a knife pointed at my nose.

A seventeen-year-old Alex Huff glared at me. “What the hell are you doing here, runt?”

I was too scared to speak. I was already terrified of Alex, a delinquent who hung out with Garrett every time we came to Rebel Island. I knew that Alex lived on the island. He made amazing fireworks displays every Fourth of July. I was vaguely aware that his dad worked for the owner, though I’d rarely seen his dad. I knew Alex hated me for some inexplicable reason, and Garrett treated me worse whenever Alex was around.

Behind him, the floor of the lantern gallery was covered in wood shavings. There was a two-foot-tall figurine standing on a stool, a half-carved woman. A hand-rolled cigarette was smoldering in an ashtray on the windowsill.

“You’re smoking pot,” I said stupidly.

Alex sneered. “Yeah, and if you tell anyone, I’ll gut you. Now what are you—” He tensed as if he’d heard something.

Somewhere below us, outside the tower, my father’s voice, heavy with anger and remorse, rang out: “Tres! Tres, goddamn it!”

Alex and I waited, still as death. My father called again, but this time he sounded farther away.

Alex locked eyes with me. “You’re hiding from him?”

I nodded. I was determined not to let Alex see me cry.

Alex didn’t speak for a full minute. He studied me, as if deciding how to kill me.

“You can’t hide on this island, runt.” He said it bitterly. “Come on. The boathouse is out back.”

“Where are we going?” The last time Alex and Garrett had taken me out on a boat, Alex had threatened to pour cement in my shoes and drop me overboard.

But for once, Alex’s expression didn’t look mean. His eyes were filled with something else—pity, perhaps?

“We’re going fishing,” he said, as if fishing were something grim, possibly fatal. “Trust me.”